Archives
Welcome to the archives of Better Cities & Towns, a publication founded by Robert Steuteville as New Urban News in 1996. This archive holds two decades of the best news and analysis on compact, mixed-use growth and development, from 1996 to 2015.
The July/August 2003 issue, on page 19, incorrectly described the Community of Christ as Mormon. The church — the owner of land in Independence, Missouri, that is slated for development as a new urban community — had its historical origins in the...
For 17 years, developer Buff Chace has planned to build residential neighborhoods on the edges of his Mashpee Commons shoppin g center on Cape Cod. And for most of those years, municipal or county regulations and conventional zoning have stood in...
Utah Governor Michael O. Leavitt, President Bush’s nominee to head the US Environmental Protection Agency, has earned a reputation in the Beehive State as a forceful proponent of “quality growth,” but some observers fault him for not having made...
The Smart Growth Network has released the PowerPoint show, “Making Land Development Regulations Work for Smart Growth.” This presentation, aimed at a wide range of audiences, discusses the kinds of land development regulations found in many...
The City of Salinas, California is moving expeditiously to adopt a new urban zoning code. Cotton/Bridge/Associates has been engaged to draft the regulatory provisions, and Calthorpe Associates is creating the design features of a “Future Growth Area...
The initial 120 of 1,116 planned homes are rising on Maple Lawn’s 507 acres in Howard County, Maryland. Developer Greenbaum and Rose Associates’ first-phase agenda also includes 90,000 square feet of a planned one million square foot office district...
With its preliminary site plan approval in hand and final approval expected this fall, Leyland Alliance’s Warwick Grove development will begin taking shape as a 40-acre addition to the Village of Warwick, in New York’s Hudson Valley. The...
Costa Pacific Communities, codeveloper of Orenco Station in Hillsboro, Oregon, plans to break ground by the end of September 2003 on the Villebois project, which includes a set of three pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods in the City of Wilsonville,...
Two new funding sources for infill development are coming into being, each with the potential to leverage a half billion dollars or more of real estate investment in the next decade. One focuses on the Miami area, the other on Albuquerque.
Transportation buffs: read and write, help CNU! Suzahna Poliwka is coordinating CNU’s literature review of materials relevant to context-sensitive design of major streets. (See the article at left for more about this project.) She needs reviewers to...
Saratoga Springs, New York, used its new Transect-based zoning to get a developer to devise a more urban, pedestrian-oriented character for a hotel, retail, office, and residential complex that will be built on Marion Avenue northeast of downtown....
Norfolk, Virginia’s East Beach is at last on its way to becoming a reality. A public/private reclamation of 100 formerly blighted bayshore acres, the plan by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company has been delayed by land acquisition, relocation of...